


Discretion

by pendrecarc



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:56:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28146462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendrecarc/pseuds/pendrecarc
Summary: Toward the end ofVictory of Eagles, Tharkay and Roland have a conversation in implications and hypotheticals, and Tharkay lets slip several revelations in the interest of his friends.
Relationships: Jane Roland & Tenzing Tharkay - Relationship
Comments: 8
Kudos: 54
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Discretion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cortue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cortue/gifts).



> Thanks to O. for the beta!

“What’s that they say about gift dragons and mouths?” Roland asked, rubbing absently at the scar across her face.

Tharkay leaned back in his camp chair, sipping at the brandy she’d offered him. It was a decent vintage, too. “Don’t think too hard about how many cows it will take to fill them, perhaps.”

She laughed. It was a rusty sound. “I shouldn’t complain about the fighting beasts dumped on my doorstep, so I won’t. Those troublesome ferals have proven worth the expense a dozen times over. Though with Napoleon’s armies raiding as they go, how we’re to keep feeding them….” She trailed off, staring at the dispatches on her makeshift desk. She looked much older than the first time he’d met her, sick dragon or no. He’d seen that in the faces and eyes of officers and ground crew alike; the weight of occupation. Tharkay could tell them a thing or two about that, if he cared to, if he thought it would be received in the right sort of spirit. Though he was self-aware enough to know the spirit in which it would be offered would not be entirely free from spite.

Nor did he view this invasion with anything like pleasure. Though he flattered himself he could look at it dispassionately, with an eye only to the relative good or harm it might cause, and to the consequences of Napoleon’s continued expansion; unmoved by the humiliation of a nation he had once been told was his own. Watching Roland’s gaze flicker, unfocused, between the pages laid out in front of her, he could only be glad that weight was one he’d shrugged off long ago.

“Well,” she said, bringing her palm up to scrub it across her eyes, “enough idle chat. You’ll leave as soon as practical, I hope. I wish I could give you a better escort across the channel, though God knows you’re better and faster at slipping past them than anyone I know. The sooner you can come back with another dozen or so—”

But he had held up his hand. “I must beg leave to attend to a few other matters. And Wellesley has given orders for Laurence.”

She frowned at him, more curious than angry. “I’ve seen those, and they’re not urgent—we can send them with anyone. I’d give you leave if I could, as a favor if nothing else, but it’s quite impossible just now. Other matters will keep.”

“And yet,” Tharkay said gently, “I find they require my immediate attention.”

She gave him a hard look. “I understand you’re not used to the ways of the service. I can even envy you a life lived on your own recognizance. But that’s not what you agreed to when you accepted a commission, Tharkay.”

In answer, he took a sealed envelope from within the breast of his aviator’s coat and handed it across. She stared at it for a moment, weary—one more page to add to that pile. Then she slit it open and read.

It was not a long letter. He’d stood in the office at the Admiralty as it was jotted off in the last minutes before his departure, the last time he was in an unoccupied London. He hadn’t expected to use it so soon.

“This says any officer in His Majesty’s service is to give you whatever assistance you require, at any time, according to your discretion.”

Tharkay knew perfectly well what it said. “And all my discretion requires is a few days of my own time, before I return to the business you’ve ordered.”

“This is a remarkable letter, if it’s genuine,” Roland said. “You could wave it under Wellesley’s nose, and he’d have to cough up a thousand men to march you across the country if you demanded it.”

“It wouldn’t stretch that far. Even if it did, I’m sure Wellesley would find a way to avoid the eventuality,” Tharkay replied, “up to and including outright refusal, regardless of orders. But it is a useful little document. May I have it back?”

Roland read it one more time, folded it back up, and offered it to him. He replaced it silently in his coat pocket.

“Well,” Roland said at last, having taken her time to work through the implications. “Damn. I knew there was more to you than met the eye, Tharkay, but this wouldn’t have been my guess.” He inclined his head slightly. “Does Laurence know?”

Tharkay permitted himself a smile. “He has more reasons to suspect than most, but I doubt the thought has crossed his mind. He is the last person to look for hidden motives in a companion. I find it—refreshing.”

She nodded. Her gaze had gone unfocused again. “I suppose you might, at that.” Then, abruptly—“You’d have known how to do the thing properly.”

“To do what?”

“The cure,” she said, looking at him full on. “When they made that damnable decision. It couldn’t stand, of course. But if you’d been in the country, you’d have known how to solve it quietly. Without all this.”

“I suppose that depends on what you mean by ‘all this’,” he said slowly. “If you mean the invasion, that may have been inevitable, and I don’t know that I could have released the cure without offering Napoleon his chance. If you mean other, nearer concerns, yes, I could have avoided those quite easily. But even had I been there, I doubt I would have been given the opportunity. And I will say, Admiral, that while I am comfortable enough in the realm of hypotheticals, I find it less useful to dwell on what-might-have beens.”

“You’re right, of course,” she said, though she seemed far from happy about it. “You know what they have him doing now?”

That sounded like a _non sequitur_. He knew it was not. “Why do you think I’ve asked you for the time?”

“Ah? Good,” she said, suddenly decisive. “It’s time someone took that in hand. We don’t have time for martyrs, either to honor or to guilt.”

“I see we’re of the same mind.”

“But when you’ve finished with that,” she said, “more ferals. We have need of them, Mr. Tharkay, Admiralty orders or no.”

“When I’ve finished with that,” he repeated, in much the same tone, “I suspect there will be more immediate use for me still in England. And perhaps, at that point, less desperate need of more ferals.”

Her head came up sharply, and there was more life in her than he’d seen through the entire interview. “Why? What do you know?” Tharkay only raised an eyebrow. She watched him a moment, keenly; he would not quite say hopefully. Roland was not one to tempt fate. “Well, I won’t press you, though I’d give my right leg to know more,” she said. “I suppose I’ll be told soon enough, once the ground forces decide it’s time to involve the rest of us in their plans. But you must be a rare hand at discretion.”

In general, Tharkay liked to think so; offering her that hint had probably not been wise, but he considered discretion to include knowing when to release information as well as when to conceal it. “Speaking of which….”

“What? Oh yes, of course. No fears on that end. You may continue to be our unlikely fairy godmother, dropping ferals on us at opportune moments, and I will continue not to question just how opportune those moments manage to be.” She smiled at him, the scar pulling the gesture off-kilter. “Good day, Mr. Tharkay.”

He saluted, just a trifle too crisply for irony, and took his leave. Arkady waited outside, already in harness; a few quick wingbeats and they were aloft, for Laurence and the north.


End file.
